I go forth to seek — To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak. - Anna Akhmatova

A multi-colored crowd streaked about, and suddenly all was totally changed. It wasn't the usual city racket. It came from a strange land.

I drink to our ruined house, to the dolor of my life, to our loneliness together; and to you I raise my glass, to lying lips that have betrayed us, to dead-cold pitiless eyes, and to the hard realities; that the world is brutal and coarse, that God, in fact, has not saved us.

I do not need your loving words or hurried kiss as night comes down in the place where we once lived innocent as children, and happier.